Aug
27

Why do we need stories?

Filed Under (Uncategorized) by Emily on 27-08-2012

When I was a small child, my dad used to tell me stories from his childhood. He went to a Catholic school in a small town. Some of his stories were sad, some were funny and others were mystifiying. I always looked forward to hearing him tell them before I went to bed. I knew he would use a lot of different voices for the characters, and he would add his opinion in the story, looking back on it from his current perspective.

He had a lot of stories about the nuns that taught him. One of the recurring themes was that he grew up wondering if the nuns were really human. Did they even have feet? They wore long black robes and white habits. Some of them were very stern, and none of them showed any appreciation for my dad’s irreverant sense of humor.

I remember all of his stories distinctly because they were wildly original and I knew I could count on him to use squeeky, high pitched voices, low voices and everything in between. He and I invented two characters and created silly stories about them. They were Albert and Bill, two saber-tooth cats. Albert and Bill came to life after a family trip to a dinosaur/saber-tooth tiger museum. The big cats had funny adventures. Sometimes they would drive my dad’s car and run it into a cornfield. Other times they dressed up and pretended to be insurance salesmen.

Stories are important because they help people bond and spend time together. If the story is written, the reader can feel a connection to the author without even having met the author. When my dad told me those stories, he had found a way to relate a part of his past with me, in the present. Even though it was hard for me to imagine my dad being a young child (in the nun stories), I was grateful to hear his stories because it gave me a new perspective on his life before he was my dad. I was so happy to go to a school where I knew that the teachers were real humans with real feet, who weren’t intimidating like I imagined the nuns were.

I love stories, especially from writers who are passionate about what they write. We need stories because they are important to the growth of relationships, but also because stories can inspire people and change their lives.



1 Comment So Far

sweet dream beds on 27 August, 2012 at 1:27 pm #
    

I love stories, especially those ones, which were told me by my grandparents when I was a small girl… These stories were always more interesting than the fairy-tales for me.. I remember all of them until now, and my memories about my grandparents are still related with their told stories..